Processing the Fall

heron61 posted a lovely looking recipe for brined apples last night, and I wanted to try it.

It calls for a gallon jar, but I can't fit that in my fridge for a month and it's not cool enough here to keep it fermenting in the garage, so I pulled out a heavy rubbersealed quart jar that I have, to make a small batch. I've got about 3/4 quart of small Seckel pears from our CSA, which are nice but for some reason don't soften up and hurt my teeth, so I figured I'd pickle them instead of some apples.

I made a third-recipe of the brine, using some nice greek honey I've got from my inlaws and some plain old regular salt instead of pickling salt. No sour cherry leaves, so some nice rolled gunpowder green Chinese tea I've got laying around. No fresh tarragon at hand -- some crushed dried bay will do. They seem to be jammed in the jar tight enough to not float, so I skipped weighting them.

bard_bloom picked up our son and looked at him seriously. "Watch well my son! See how your mother uses a recipe while changing every last thing in it."

I think they're going to be great. If not, well, I can't really blame heron61. He tried to tell me what to do.

(no subject)

So, I've decided what I think I want to do for my birthday. In the afternoon, I'd like to go with a small gang of people to the Brooklyn studio of Christopher Brosius, the guy who founded Demeter Fragrances and is now doing art perfuming, and sniff stuff for a long time.

After that, I'd like to go to a box karaoke place (possibly Muse or possibly another one), and sing ourselves silly. Probably with sushi before or after depending on the overall timing. If you haven't been to box karaoke, it's essentially a private room with full control over the songs, no waiting for drunk guys singing "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", no stranger stage fright.

If I planned this, I wonder, would anyone come? It would probably be on or around December 16.

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